Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I think I am correct in saying that since the Fine Gael-Independent Alliance-Independent Government came to office, we have managed to increase the number of teachers employed by the State by 2,000. We have 2,000 more teachers working in the education system than we had just under two years ago. Overall, we are able to recruit teachers but we acknowledge that we are encountering difficulties in some areas, particularly when it comes to substitution and certain specialised subjects. That is in part because we have taken on so many additional teachers and many of the younger teachers who might have been substituting in the past are now in full-time jobs or taking up permanent positions.

We have already made some progress towards pay equalisation. In 2016, the Minister, Deputy Bruton, concluded an agreement with teachers unions that provided for pay increases of between 15% and 22% for newly-qualified teachers. Those increases took effect in January 2017 and, most recently, in January 2018. That now means that a newly-qualified teacher straight out of college has a starting salary of just under €36,000 a year, which is not a bad starting salary for a graduate when compared to what is available in various parts of the private sector. Notwithstanding that, we, as a Government, acknowledge that there are 60,000 public servants who joined the public service since 2011, that they are on lower salaries than their peers and that this creates a difficulty.

We have pay restoration now across the public service and pay increases in most parts of the private sector. When we entered into pay restoration and pay increases - because of the sacrifices that Irish people made and on foot of decisions of Government which made that possible - we decided that we would start with the lowest paid. That is where pay restoration started and that was done with the agreement of the trade unions. However, we acknowledge that there are now 60,000 public servants - some of whom have been in the public service for seven years - who are on lower pay scales and that this creates difficulties. It creates discord in the workplace that some public servants are on different pay scales to others. We are also conscious that among those 60,000 public servants are younger people, often in their 20s and 30s, who face expensive bills, such as those relating to rent, who are struggling to save to buy homes and who often face high child care costs. Bearing this in mind, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform has published the report on analysis of this and it is his intention in the next couple of weeks, once the unions' conference season is over, to begin an engagement and negotiation with the trade union movement with a view to achieving pay equality for public servants over a number of years.

We need to bear in mind, as Deputy Micheál Martin rightly pointed out, that this would cost €200 million in one year in return for which we would get no extra hours and no extra staff. It is not the kind of thing we can do either in one go or in one year, but we do want to enter negotiations with the trade unions in the next couple of weeks on a pathway to achieving that.

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